A Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), or wireless network device, more simply, Wi-Fi, is a computer network that links more devices using a wireless connection method within a limited area (usually a home, office, school, and so on). These kinds of connections allow people to move around the radio coverage and still be connected to the network. Under this point of view, they are an evolution of the Ethernet network seen in the previous chapter, since even in this case, every device communicating over it divides a stream of data into shorter pieces called frames that contain several pieces of information useful for data communication.
As for the Ethernet, a wireless network device is a computer peripheral that is used to get access to a wireless network and then to exchange data with other wireless network equipped computers. In a GNU/Linux system, these devices are usually called wlan0, wlan1 and so on even if some exceptions may exist (in some circumstances...